Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/230

Rh Rights tickets, but in a few the Unionists elected their men.

The question was soon raised as to what position the Union men would assume toward the convention; they gave an immediate and unequivocal answer, which was in consonance with the doctrines to which they had clung. In the first place, they wanted it clearly understood that they would not directly or indirectly sanction any act of nullification passed by the legislature or the convention. Suppose the federal and state governments should come into forcible and violent collision, which must the citizen obey? The Union men announced that when South Carolina should think proper to reclaim their allegiance by an act of secession, they must either obey the behest of her sovereign will or expatriate themselves; but that, so long as South Carolina admitted the Constitution and laws of the United States to be the supreme law of the land, anything in her own constitution and laws to the contrary notwithstanding, they would be constrained to uphold the paramount authority of the Constitution and laws